The West at the Crossroads: The Case for U.S.-Soviet Appeasement

THE WEST AT THE CROSSROADS: THE CASE FOR U.S.-SOVIET APPEASEMENT George Liska I? an earlier article in this journal,1 I contended that we might well be witnessing now a penultimate phase in relations between the West and Russia, to be followed either by a lethal conflict between these two logical partners or by their convergence within an enlarged West. Specific crises—Poland and Afghanistan for the Soviets, and Iran and El Salvador for the Americans —have raised questions regarding American strategy: Will it embrace the aim of reciprocal subversion, or will it explore the grounds for solidarity between the two empires? In this article I shall outline at greater length the rationale for, and key elements in, a strategy for East-West equilibrium that would draw on joint superpower interests, aim to enhance them, and thus minimize the likelihood of conflagration. At the same time, this strategy would maintain the tensions necessary for a minimum world order even as it realigns their directions. Expanding upon arguments made in the earlier article, this essay will start from the premise that the present era of national and worldwide discontent is another of those proverbial last chances, though perhaps more 1. "Russia and the West: The Next to Last Phase," SAiS Review (Summer 1981), pp. 141-160. The present article develops further the themes of my Russia and the Road to Appeasement (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). George Liska is professor of political science at The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and at SAIS. Professor Liska writes extensively on the theory and practice of international politics. His most recent book, Russia and the Road to Appeasement (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press), was published in 1982, supplementing the earlier Career ofEmpire (1978). 169 170 SAIS REVIEW final or terminal than most. Western and, in particular, American policy now has the opportunity to strike out in the right path at a fast-approaching crossroads, leading in one direction toward reconstruction of the international system, and in the other toward uncontrollable upheaval. After the triumph of public opposition to the war in Vietnam, the truth behind the American empire was revealed by the persistent efforts of both the Carter and Reagan administrations to reinflate the national ego as part of rehabilitating America's role in world politics. Jimmy Carter's venture into moralizing ersatz-imperialism by way of a human rights campaign proved incompatible both with the specific foreign interests of the United States and the domestic exigencies of the targeted regimes—Third World and Communist . Ronald Reagan's attempt to substitute a muted variety of militarist nationalism in conservative clothing in place of Carter's spectacularly dressedup liberal humanism was quickly imperiled by the public's preference for a welfare state over the warfare state. As projected budget deficits grew, so waned public readiness to pay even the material price for the easier, military substitute for moral primacy. America's fitness for the imperial role (i.e., the willingness not only to arm but to use arms in combat-prone interventions) was meanwhile being sorely tested in the Middle East even more than in the Western Hemisphere. In both arenas at crucial points the administration was unable to orchestrate even a fictitious Subdelegation of its imperial function to allied dependents. Instead, it half-heartedly followed the latter's lead. This odd distribution of roles was to present U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East with a still more awkward choice than it had faced, in the Falkland Islands crisis, between an old regional-empire concern about Argentina and a new global-empire commitment to Britain. On one side was the option oftacitly endorsing the conversion ofa major part of Lebanon to the status of an Israeli satellite as part of a miniempire solution to Israel's security dilemma. That approach was as subjectively galling as it was objectively defensible, in terms of comparative sustainability over the medium term, against the declared assumptions and objectives of Camp David. And that solution was implicit not only in a matching role for Syria in northern Lebanon, but also in the Jordanian formula for the West Bank, which was liable to make any Hashemite...